Adam's Rib

It may have been one of the more financially successful (yet apparently still disappointing) features of 1923 but there is a reason that you never hear anyone talking about this movie.

Charming in its own quaint way, the appeal is in how it has aged like one of those wines that's worthless until it's a lifetime old. And I don't drink wine.

Cute little farce with a lot to say about the relations between the genders and yet oblivious to the basic suggestion that we just shouldn't have gender at all, there is humor and cuteness to be had, mostly in the intertitles and it drags on and on. Not even the sequence set in the stone age really holds the attention.

"Adam's Rib" is a rather sappy and VERY difficult to believe story. However, despite the film seeming very old fashioned, for 1923 it is very well made and probably played better in 1923. This being said, the film did NOT do very well at the box office and according to IMDB, it about broke even at the box office.

A rich guy spends all of his time working...and leaves his wife and daughter to fend for themselves. The daughter seems okay...but the wife is a mess. She longs for love and romance, things she isn't getting from her husband, and she longs to have an affair...even if it means fighting over a man with her daughter. Yes, they both want the same man.

Now here is where it gets ridiculous. It turns out the man they are both pursuing is a secret king who was recently deposed! The hubby finds out about this and he helps the king regain his throne to get him out of the way...but that DOES NOT solve his marital issues. Will the husband continue to be a big dope and ignore his wife in favor of work or what?

As I mentioned above, technically speaking it's a good film. It looks lovely and is the sort of rich folks in love plot Cecil B. DeMille was in love with in the 1920s. Today, it just seems very dated and skippable.

Although by this stage, the 42 year old Cecil B. DeMille was indulging himself in spectacles, he does pay attention to detail when it comes to costumes, and spares no expense in his research of props and authenticity. He makes a better painter of pictures than he does of directing actors.

March 1923's "Adam's Rib" was the last in a string of bedroom farces DeMille had produced that previously had proven to be a money machine. This time Paramount was disappointed in its returns, barely breaking even. Many attribute the fact to a long sequence in the middle of the film devoted to the characters harkening back to the caveman days. Buster Keaton had just released his 'Three Ages,' where one third of it focused on early mankind. The thinking among analysts was audiences were tired of seeing actors placed in primitive settings. Plus the story of a dissatisfied wife of a commodity trader having an affair with a cast-off king of a small European country didn't strike viewers as too appealing.

"Adam's Rib," no relation to the Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn 1949 vehicle, has been linked to the Howard Hawks'-directed 1938 screwball Cary Grant/Hepburn comedy 'Bringing Up Baby.' Both deal with romantic female affairs with male paleontologists. Hawks was working for DeMille since 1919, starting as a propman and as a script writer when he was involved in "Adam's Rib." It's likely Hawks got the idea of a dinosaur-based story when he was drawing up the 1938 classic.

Anna Q. Nilsson has been married for nineteen years to Milton Sills and is hungry for romance in the arms of Theodore Kosloff, deposed King of Morania. In order to win her back, Milton bribes Morania to put the monarch back on the throne, but their daughter, Pauline Garon, decides to save their marriage by vamping Theodore, which plays hob with her budding romance with clueless archaeologist Elliot Dexter.

Lots of comedies burlesqued DeMille's epics about how the rich were leading wild, luxurious, unhappy lives, so DeMille decided to get in on the act himself. Unhappily for all concerned, including the contemporary audience, only Milton Sills and Julia Faye seem to have been in on the joke, as everyone else plays it absolutely straight.

DeMille's productions were so over the top anyway, that it's not easy to tell, but the inevitable flashback sequence, usually set in decadent places like ancient Rome or Babylon, takes place among cavemen with Julia Faye capering around. She had apparently consulted with her fellow DeMille mistress, Jeanie McPherson, who had written the screenplay.

Perhaps DeMille did not realize it, otherwise he might have chosen a leading lady or two with better comedy chops -- certainly Bebe Daniels was still working for Paramount. On the other hand, DeMille had a vicious sense of humor and perhaps he thought he could pull it off without telling anyone. Or perhaps he was just getting bored and anxious to get on with THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and his other Bible and historical epics.

In any case, once you recognize this is a comedy, it plays pretty well. It's too bad the accompanist for the Grapevine Video release did not seem to notice it. Oh, well.